A progressive voice shining light into the darkness of regressive politics. Pretty much anything will be fair game, and little will be held sacred.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

RoboCalls Scandal - It's Still Alive

For those who had lost track of the Robocalls fraud perpetrated by the Harper Conservatives during the 2011 election, it hasn't gone away.

Harper has done an enormous amount of work to bury this case. Not only have they fought the allegations tooth and nail, they have hobbled the ability of Elections Canada to fully investigate the scope of the malfeasance by stripping the agency's budget. Ultimately, a low level party operative is now facing charges related to one riding.

That court case has been slowly making its way through the courts, and because of a publication ban in place, the ability of the public to find out precisely what is going on is extremely limited.

An Elections Canada investigator alleges he had reason to believe that Michael Sona admitted he was involved in misleading robocalls in the 2011 federal election and also alleges that the former Conservative Party campaign worker had hinted he didn’t act alone.

Sona is the only person charged over the “Pierre Poutine” calls sent out to more than 7,000 voters in Guelph, Ont., on election day.

These new but unproven allegations against Sona are detailed in a sworn statement from Elections Canada investigator Allan Mathews, which came to light Monday only after a judge issued a publication ban restricting the reporting of some of the statement’s details.

I personally find it difficult to believe that Sona came up with, and executed, this scheme on his own.